Everything I Need to Know About (Real) Robots I Learned From Transformers

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Everything I Need to Know About (Real) Robots I Learned From Transformers

Transformers don’t care about people, period. That's what I learned growing up in the 1980s, religiously watching a race of robot Titans from outer space wage a secret war on Earth. Transformers didn’t even want to be seen by humans. They casually blended into our neighborhoods by turning themselves into all kinds of cutting-edge machinery — you know, like cassette players. I sat in front of the TV, my Kool-Aid-stained mouth agape, as these armored, primary-colored toys engaged in interstellar combat with only a passing interest in us. Like a mechanical pantheon of Greek gods, the Autobots and Decepticons were smarter, older, and vastly more powerful than human beings. They tromped through our world but were thoroughly wrapped up in their own concerns, usually involving their home planet, Cybertron. The Zeus of mythology appeared on Earth as a swan; Optimus Prime moved around suburbia disguised as a bright red and blue 1970s Freightliner semitrailer truck that could fly. Now that was cool.

So when I started building robots myself, it was only natural that the independence of Prime and his crew stuck with me. Remember that before Transformers, sci-fi robots in the US were either scary (HAL 9000) or infantilized (every robot in Star Wars). We giggled at the antics of C-3PO and Artoo, but they lacked any real autonomous authority. Megatron as a giant handgun—now that guy had bucketloads of authority. With their blatant disregard for people, Transformers burned into my psyche the idea that robots didn’t have to depend on—or be limited in the same ways as—humans. That was the kind of robot I wanted to build.

It’s a subtle but important lesson: Ballsy independent robots designed to sense, think, and act according to their own, nonhuman rules can transcend human abilities rather than pathetically imitate them. Real-life examples of this abound today: In 2001, the Deep Space 1 smart probe used an AutoNav system to choose its own path to Comet Borrelly; the Seahorse autonomous underwater vehicle from the US Navy can search unmanned for submerged mines; and in recent military demonstrations, bullet trackers like iRobot’s RedOwl can pinpoint camouflaged snipers in milliseconds. None of these robots want to be a human, hurt a human, or even ask a human for directions.

Were the researchers behind these machines inspired by Transformers? You’ll have to ask them. But I think if you look closely you’ll see the distinct legacy of an Autobot or Decepticon lurking in the DNA of these and many other projects around the world. And hey, who knows, maybe one day someone will create a new silicon-based life-form, one that looks cool and conducts awesome secret missions with little or no input from pesky humans. Oh, and maybe sometimes turns into a dinosaur.

Where’s My Damn Transformer?

OK, nobody is seriously trying to build a full-on Transformer. But some projects embrace the idea more wholeheartedly than others. Check out these examples of what Hasbro’s toy line hath wrought.

HRP 2Not every humanoid robot has to look like a creepy astronaut. Kawada Industries tapped Yutaka Izubuchi, creator of the celebrated Patlabor anime series, to design the exterior of its walking android. Under this manga shell, Promet is basically a next-gen version of Asimo, Honda’s bipedal robot. Only in this case Promet’s interface is open source, so developers can make custom software applications for the bot.

i-footTransformers introduced America to the badassitude of giant robots. Of course, it wasn’t long before we started imagining riding around in these walking machines. In 2004, Toyota unveiled this bipedal vehicle, called the i-foot. Guided by a joystick, the 7'9" walker will kneel down to allow a passenger to climb aboard.

JustinOptimus Prime had to be careful around delicate human beings and so do real-world robots. Designed at the German Aerospace Center, the 3-foot-tall Justin can detect the amount of force needed for a specific task and adjust accordingly. This makes it capable not only of opening bottles and emptying trash cans, but also of patting its creators on the head without crushing their skulls.